Trigger: Fabulous Hyoutei
by Keep-a-Secret
Summary: Like Seigaku, Hyoutei also have to take part in a writing task, based on a single trigger word. While our fabulous boys have many other things they would rather be doing with their fabulous time, getting it done may just lead to some interesting results.
1. Confusion

_Confusion_

_I was a very, very confused little boy_

Taki Haginosuke looked around the locker room; he was the only one in there, save for Hiyoshi who was showering. He'd be showering for _ages_, what could _possibly_ take him so long?

Well actually, Hiyoshi was a little funny when it came to hygiene matters, as Taki knew very well. He almost religiously carried around a set of chopsticks so he didn't have to use anyone else's, as well as numerous packs of wipes to clean the chopsticks, and his hands, and his face, and just about everything he touched.

This included Taki, who found it pretty cute, actually.

But yes, his obsessive-compulsive attitude to cleanliness left Taki sitting in the locker room with nothing to do.

What better than his little writing project? They only had until Monday to do them so he may as well get ahead and do it Friday night.

_Did I count as a little boy back then? I don't really know. I'm one of nine kids and the only boy, so that probably did something. A year older than me are the triplets Akako, Kyoko and Machiko, then there's me and my two sisters (I'm a triplet, woo!) Natsuko and Nozomi, and a year younger than me are more triplets, Rini, Sachi and Usagi. _

_Because we were all so close in age we were all treated the same, and being the lone boy in a huge group of girls, it was cheapest for me to wear my sisters' hand-me-downs, girly jeans and flowery shirts._

_I think that's what confused me first._

The feminine teen picked up one of his friend's shirts, and fingered the fabric softly. Slightly rough with dirt, uneven in texture, as though his mother had made dozens upon dozens of repairs. A slight musk about it, too; he probably wore that one yesterday as well.

He compared it to his own shirt; stained slightly purple all over from being put in a wash with his sister's party dress – not that he minded – with a hint of jasmine scent from yesterday's wash. Not a tear, not a stitch, he was always very careful with himself. He was always used to taking care of his clothes.

_I always had to take good care of my clothes when I was younger because I shared them with at least two other kids. Never the skirts, just the shirts and trousers and sneakers. We all had our hair cut the same; too, we looked identical, like I was one of the girls._

_That confused everyone._

What the hell was Hiyoshi _doing_ in there?! He was taking too long. This did, however, provide Taki with a marvellous opportunity to root around in the boy's bag.

Chopsticks, wipes, books, pencil case, the usual. He smiled softly as he pulled out Hiyoshi's contact lenses; bless him, he had thought that wearing glasses would mean nobody would take him seriously, so kept his horrendous eyesight a secret until he was old enough to wear contacts instead.

Of course, everybody took Oshitari seriously, but by that point, Hiyoshi decided there wasn't space for two pairs of glasses in Hyoutei's tennis team. Taki had a bit of a weak spot for the whole idea of Hiyoshi wearing contacts, it was just so cute.

_It got really confusing when I started Junior High, all my sisters went to a girls' school, so I started Hyoutei on my own. Suddenly I couldn't hang around with girls anymore because I was too different from them, but at the same time I was too different from the boys to be friends with them. Mom gave me my own room, too, and said I could have it any colour I wanted but please, not pink._

_My room is purple._

Aww, how sweet. Hiyoshi was singing something to himself. Taki loved how his little kouhai was just so adorable, even if his little kouhai was taller than him. He tried _so_ hard to be macho, but everyone knew he secretly loved it when his flamboyant upperclassman ruffled his cute mushroomy hair.

_Mom kept trying to get me into new things. Football, action movies, boy things. She bought me new clothes, but nothing felt right. I just wanted to gossip and watch movies with my sisters, but for some reason that stopped being the done thing._

_I also started getting my own allowance; we all did when we started Junior High. I spent it on things I _actually_ wanted; fitted shirts, embroidered jeans like my sisters wore, jewellery, makeup, I kept it all hidden away in a drawer for a long time, but it just felt so much better knowing they were there and they were mine._

_My mother was very confused when she found it._

The singing stopped, that meant Hiyoshi was probably washing his hair and didn't want to get shampoo in his mouth; an unfortunate fate that Taki himself had experienced one too many times. It wasn't _his_ fault that Jiroh was only awake enough to make a funny conversation while he was showering.

Ah, yes, Hiyoshi always smacked him around the head when that happened, and wandered off muttering about his stupid girly senpai. Five minutes after freaking out and running to get water and panicking about _what if Taki-senpai gets poisoned_?!

Cuuuuute.

_It was my 'secretive attitude to buying girly stuff' that freaked Mom out; if she didn't want me to be secretive about it then why did she so actively discourage me? She had a 'talk' with me._

_My self esteem like, plummeted. Like wheeeeee SPLAT._

_Then I started playing tennis._

_For most of my first year I didn't talk to anybody and just sat around feeling sorry for myself, but in second year, Atobe (who was vice captain at that point) pretty much saved my life. Practice was on but the first years didn't appear to think they needed to show up, only one first year came to practice that day and for the most part he sat there and scowled. Atobe told me to baby-sit until he found out what happened to the rest of the first year, so I did and I said hi to the first year. We played well for the rest of that practice session, but he treated me with total disdain._

_I _**loved** _it._

_Sure, Hiyoshi-kun was a little brat who hated everything and treated me like crap, but he treated me just as much like crap as he did anyone else. He didn't act any different because of who I was. There was, actually, only one exception he made for me._

_I was the only one allowed to touch the hair._

He giggled softly, putting the pen in his mouth as he pondered what to write next. He was actually enjoying himself, that, and the adorable little song floating from the showers. Sounded like Hiyoshi had finished washing his hair.

Gah, he was going to give him the biggest hug _ever_ when he got out of there.

_Somehow Hiyoshi-kun made everything better. We became friends, ish, not that he'd ever admit that. But then, if he wasn't my friend, why would he come shopping with me when I know full well he hates it? Why would he sit on the phone for hours and hours and hours, listening to me sobbing about a sad movie I saw?_

_Why would he still hang out with me even when everybody knows I have a crush on him?_

_Unless he doesn't know, he can be as dense as one of those planks of wood he's always smashing sometimes. Haha, cute._

_Yeah…Hiyoshi-kun confuses me sometimes._

"Taki-senpai? Why are you hanging around the locker room like a paedophile?" Hiyoshi came back into the room, picked up his uniform and wandered off to change in the corner of the room, where Taki wouldn't see him.

"Waiting for you, silly"  
"That makes you even more of a paedophile, stop watching me change"  
"I'm not! I'm doing my project _actually_" Taki smiled softly. "When you're done being paranoid, I'm stopping at that nice smoothie place on the way home, wanna come? I'll pay."  
"Sure, just don't make me have anything pink; you looked so _gay_ sat there with a strawberry smoothie and a pile of cookies."

"Wouldn't dream of it" beaming, Taki scribbled a few more lines into his book before taking a now-dressed Hiyoshi's arm and dragging him away to have a nice, _blueberry_ smoothie or six.

_I guess being confused can be good sometimes; it makes life a little more interesting._


	2. Love

**Before this chapter starts I just want to thank Khelc-sul Renai for, intentionally of not, giving me this idea in a review of chapter seven in the first Trigger XD**

* * *

_Love_

_All the world's love should be directed towards Ore-Sama._

Well…that was productive. Atobe had spent a grand total of one and a half minutes on his project and he was pretty much already finished. He _really_ needed to waste some time.

Not that he would ever say that, Atobe _never_ wasted time; he made good use of every moment. And that was why he was making marvellous use of his time by counting the fibres in his bedroom carpet.

The phone rang, a godsend.

"Aahn?"

"Hi Buchou!" ah, it was Jiroh, and he was hyper. _Perfect_, Jiroh was the expert on wasting time. "I'm doing my project and I'm stuuuuuck. I've got like one line and it sucks, a lot, it's not sugoi at all. It sounded really easy but Ruriko is being so annoying and she keeps stealing my pen and telling me to call you and _seven year old things_ Buchouuuuuuu!"

Wait, did Jiroh not breathe throughout that entire sentence?

"Breathe, Jiroh, breathe."  
"Sorry Buchou, but I'm so stuck! What word did you get? I know we're not supposed to tell but nobody will care right? Right? What word did you get?"  
"Ore-Sama…" Atobe paused, wondering if he should lie. No, nobody lied to Jiroh and got away without being dragged to hell for it later. Even if Jiroh didn't care it just wasn't done to lie to him. He was too fluffy. "…has to write about love."  
"_Sugoi_!" Ouch, Ore-Sama's delicate ears. "Write about Ruriko, she loves you!"  
Now that was a good idea.

_Maybe not all the world's love, some exceptions need to be made, after all. Married couples, for example, they already have enough love for each other._

_And Ruriko, she doesn't need to love Ore-Sama either. She just doesn't._

_If __**all**__ the world's love was directed towards Ore-Sama, that wouldn't be fair, especially if it was from people on the other side of the world who will never meet Ore-Sama. Maybe things need to be brought in a little closer._

"…Ruriko says she's gonna marry you one day, Buchou, you're her handsome prince and she's going to marry you because she's a princess." Oh, had Jiroh been talking that whole time? Probably nothing vital that affected Atobe's life in any major way. "I keep telling her she should marry Gakuto-kun's brother instead but she says Eiki smells."

"Jiroh, what word do you have?" Atobe said quickly, almost too quickly, but if he didn't say it fast enough Jiroh would have started rambling about Gakuto's sister, who was dating Shishido's brother, and wouldn't it be _so sugoi_ if they got married and Gakuto and Shishido became related?

"Smile, isn't that sugoi?" Oh yes, it was, Atobe suddenly got the mental image of Jiroh with his cutest smile on his face. It was enough to make him drop his pen in a moment of weakness. "If it wasn't for Ruriko I'd have _so_ much more done. Lots of stuff makes me smile, like sleeping and the park and sleeping and pretty things and sleeping and tennis and sleeping and-"

"Ore-sama will write with you tomorrow" Atobe rushed, _anything_ to stop him rambling on and on and on. A little babbling was endearing, but sometimes Jiroh really took the biscuit. He took the biscuit, ate it and got very, very hyper on it.

"Okay! That's a great idea, Buchou! Trust you to get good ideas!" oh yes, trust Atobe to get ideas, damn. But a morning with Jiroh, and _just _Jiroh, didn't sound like too much torture the more Atobe thought about it. "Oh, and if you need to write about love, ask Oshitari-kun! He's always reading love books!"

Jiroh hung up, and Atobe silently thanked whichever glorious deity that was watching over him for making Jiroh so naïve and oblivious. Books about _love_, Atobe's backside; behind the perfect posture and flawless manners, Oshitari Yuushi had one of the filthiest minds Atobe knew of.

_All the love in Hyoutei Gakuen should be directed towards Ore-Sama._

_Wait, almost all of it already is, and Ore-Sama doesn't like it. The fangirls are annoying, and because it is in bad taste to refuse a gift, Ore-Sama is constantly bogged down by offering upon offering from admiring females and males alike._

_Most of these get fed to Jiroh later, which makes him even more hyperactive. No, all of the love in Hyoutei Gakuen should __**not**__ be directed towards Ore-Sama._

As much as Atobe disliked texting, it was the only way to ever get through to Oshitari. When asked about this, he simply replied that calling was reserved for family matters or naughty voicemail from Gakuto. Atobe did _not_ need to know that last part.

**You lose all tone of voice through a text and I like to get a clear picture when Gakuto sends me these things **Oshitari had said, delighted to be completely freaking Atobe out. **You say you have four phones, but I bet you have a fifth somewhere full of filthy candid photos of Jiroh in the showers. Cell phones are marvellous things.**

Oshitari was a scary, scary person, Atobe decided.

_All of the love within the Hyoutei Regulars should be directed towards Ore-Sama. __**Except**__ the love between Oshitari and Gakuto, Ore-Sama wants nothing to do with that in the slightest, __**no**__ thank you. Yes, all the Hyoutei Regulars' love, except Oshitari and Gakuto._

Aah…but what about Choutarou? The boy was like a younger brother to Atobe, and countless lunch hours or even entire practices had been spent in the music rooms, consoling Choutarou through some hang-up he was having over his mother or Shishido. Or a lot of the time, what his mother would do if she found out his feelings for Shishido. Choutarou's love needn't be directed towards Atobe, after all. He deserved - no, he _needed_ – Shishido's love, as soon as the oblivious arse got around to noticing his kouhai's feelings.

Whoops, had he written that down? Where was the ink eraser…?

_Alright, all the Hyoutei Regulars' love except Oshitari, Gakuto and Choutarou. And Shishido, he needs to love Choutarou. Oh, and of course Ore-Sama wouldn't make Kabaji give his love to anyone he didn't want. He has already done so much for Ore-Sama. Hiyoshi…Hiyoshi doesn't really love anything so Ore-Sama won't make him do anything, and Taki is so obviously enamoured with him, Ore-Sama may as well leave them both be._

_Perfect, all the love within the Hyoutei Regulars, except Oshitari, Gakuto, Choutarou, Shishido, Hiyoshi, Taki and Kabaji._

Atobe did a little counting on his perfectly manicured fingers.

That only left Jiroh.

_Yes, that seems about right._

_Jiroh has a lot of people's love to make up for._


	3. Focus

_Focus_

_Taki-senpai really needs to learn how to focus._

Hiyoshi gritted his teeth and lunged at the punch bag, moments later; it sat in a sorry state in the corner of the room. Hiyoshi was going to need to get Dad to put it back up again. In the meantime, he may as well get his stupid, gay little project done.

The family dojo was quiet, very quiet.

_I can only focus when it's quiet, like it is now. Dad's gone off to hospital to visit his friend, Mom's visiting a friend for a girly coffee or something and she never comes in the dojo anyway, and Kobayashi's sitting on his fat ass playing his Xbox as usual. He never comes in here either._

_It's nice and late so the dojo's shut to the public, just me and that bat that made himself comfy on one of the ceiling crossbeams. I can focus here. I can focus at school; too, my class is quiet. Ish._

_I focus in tennis as well, I have to otherwise I'll never overthrow Buchou. I focus in every aspect of my life and in that respect, I am unstoppable._

_Taki-senpai just calls me stubborn, then pinches my cheeks and says I'm cute. Does he have to work at being that gay or does it just come naturally to him?!_

No matter how much he focused and worked, Hiyoshi could never understand his girly senpai. He just didn't get it, how could a _boy_ be such a convincing _girl_? How could a _boy_ spend half of tennis practice painting his nails?

Well, Hiyoshi was actually very good with manicures himself. His mother had taught him to do it and he frequently gave Atobe that extra little homo-sparkle. He didn't do it in his free time though, and if he got any of the gay-in-a-bottle on his own fingernails he feared having a wicked witch moment and melting into a little puddle of gekokujou.

_Thinking about it, Taki-senpai can actually be incredibly focused. Maybe in class or in tennis he's always off with the fairies (pft) but he's completely lost in what he's doing when he's, oh, waxing his legs or something. When he's concentrating, he always sticks his tongue out a little._

_Again, gay._

_And maybe a little cute._

_He can focus perfectly well when he feels like it, he just never feels like it._

Hiyoshi took pride in his focus, in his plan to gekokujou Atobe, and in his ability to earn good grades on top of his tennis. Granted, he was never going to be like Ootori, but he was proud of how well he did.

_Ootori needs to focus more, too, as Oshitari-senpai says 'he's recently given in to teenage hormones and realised the advantages to playing in the back'. I don't get it, but then, I don't get doubles. Doubles is gay and playing with Mukahi-senpai when all he did was whinge about wanting to play with his gay boyfriend was gay. Gay meaning crap. Doubles is crap. And gay._

_Taki-senpai used to play doubles with Ootori, did he play in the back, or did Ootori? Did Taki-senpai ever get bored during a game and just waste time watching Ootori's ass?_

_Yeah, that sounds like something he'd do, because it's gay, and Taki-senpai is gay._

Hiyoshi paused and counted the number of times he'd written the word 'gay' before frowning. He was definitely from the Hyoutei tennis team alright, he was gonna need to start wearing a mask soon to stop himself getting infected by gay.

_Who else needs to focus? Not Mom, she's very focused, she cooks a lot and she's always so lost in it she wouldn't notice if there was an earthquake._

_Not Dad, he's an Enbu master, you have to be focused to master something._

_Aa, Kobayashi could stand focusing more. His grades are crap and he just plays his Xbox all day. He's 18 and he's never had a girlfriend ever, he says he'll get a girlfriend when Lara Croft accepts his advances._

_My brother is sick sometimes._

"Waka-chan? I brought you food, you need food"  
Hiyoshi grunted and refused to look at the door. "Go away, Fatass"

"Don't be so mean to your big brother, I paused my game just to get you some freaking calories. Remember calories, Waka-chan? Yummy yummy, in your tummy, eat them up or I'll put you out the window. Remember when I put you out the window? You cried." The taller boy, hair wild and unbrushed, dressed in a pair of tatty pyjamas, waved a pile of jam sandwiches at his baby brother.

"No I didn't, I came back inside, picked up your fat ass and put _you_ out the window, now go away, I hate jam."

Kobayashi shrugged and put the sandwiches down "fine, be a brat, I've got a date with the lovely Lara"

_Damn, he's learning. I love jam._

_Nobody at tennis knows what I like to eat, they don't know anything about me, it's not something I need to tell people, I'm too focused on tennis while everyone else is cooing over Ootori, despite the fact that Kabaji and I are the __**same age **__as Ootori. He's the sweet one who follows Shishido like a lost puppy and makes a face liked a kicked kitten whenever I call Shishido an asshole. I hate that face, it makes me want to apologise to Shishido. I can't say he's not entirely focused, he's a master at his music, and he gets good grades, and he plays good tennis, but he really needs to stop making those faces at Shishido. They're really gay faces._

_All pink and smiley._

_Pink is __**gay**__._

_Except jam. Jam is pink and the crotch of the first person to call jam gay gets a date with my foot._

Hiyoshi couldn't remember when he first started liking jam; it had to be a moment of weakness, when he'd stopped focusing.

Oh yes, it was that time Taki-senpai brought his home ec project to practice. Tiny spherical biscuits that, when opened, were full of hot, almost liquid jam. They were _gorgeous_, though Hiyoshi would never say so. Taki-senpai spent most of practice sitting about eating them, idly licking jam off his fingers.

That was _gross_, Hiyoshi had thought, shuddering and putting on some hand sanitizer to get rid of the icky feeling. At the same time, it gave Hiyoshi the sudden urge to try eating jam again. He picked up a sandwich and started to eat.

His phone rang.

"Hiiiiii!" he sighed, there went his focus. Taki-senpai did that to him. "I need your help, Hiyoshi-kun! My sisters are having a sleepover and I _need help_"

He hung up before Hiyoshi even had time to answer. But, he already knew what he had to do. With eight teenage girls and one Taki in that house, there were a lot of sleepovers, and Hiyoshi knew his role.

He grabbed his Hyoutei sleepover manicure box and left the house, book under his arm.

---

"Wheee! Hiyoshi-chan, your manicures are so awesome!"

He gritted his teeth again, and ignored the millionth girl who was cooing over her shiny new nails. Hiyoshi had given up on remembering which girls were related to Taki-senpai and which ones were guests; normally it was easy to tell because all Taki-senpai's sisters looked _exactly_ like him, but tonight they all looked the same!

_Girls need to focus more. All of them. I hate girls._

Quite often, Taki would be left out of sleepover proceedings for the dire sin of being male. Incredibly camp, but male and thus excluded. However if Hiyoshi and his magical manicures were added to the equation, he was allowed. The second year loathed sleepovers, because he loathed girls. Girls were stupid and interacting with girls was stupid. The huge Hyoutei sleepovers were just like interacting with girls, too, but he had to go to those, or Atobe might kick him off the team or something. He never missed his manicures.

Hiyoshi eventually finished polishing up the fingernails of every girl in the house, all twenty or so of them, _and_ Taki-senpai's mother. The two boys went off to Taki-senpai's room to escape drowning in the oestrogen pool.

…_Taki-senpai says he decorated his entire bedroom himself. He chose all the furniture and customised it and painted the walls all himself, even all the fiddly stencilled parts. He __**can**__ focus when he feels like it._

The room was so…purple. Purple and white with a pink border, and all the furniture had been painted and sewn and made to fit the bill, too. It was a nice room, for a _girl_. But it was Taki-senpai's room and Taki-senpai's work, and Hiyoshi had to appreciate it when Taki-senpai actually did any work.

"Give me a manicure, too?" Taki giggled, sitting cross legged on his bed, "Then I wanna try giving you one. You can always redo them later if I screw up, and don't you want to gekokujou Atobe with nice nails?"

So, Hiyoshi ended up giving Taki-senpai the works, too, one hand being polished to perfection while the other rooted around in Hiyoshi's bag. He seemed interested in the sparkly sequin letters but then, they were gay, so of course he would. Then Taki-senpai had a go; he was actually quite good, though Hiyoshi did _not_ enjoy the baby blue nail polish. At least he hadn't chosen pink. Taki carefully stuck a little letter or shape on each nail. Hiyoshi fanned out his fingers.

**I-heart-L-I-K-E-heart-Y-O-U**

_If I had been more focused I would have been able to find something to say in this situation._


	4. Smile

_Smile_

_I smile lots, lots of stuff makes me smile. Sleeping and pretty things and the park and sleeping and tennis and sweets and Buchou all make me smile. Buchou is always funny when I smile at him, he goes all red and slinks away. I like red, and cats slink and I like cats, so when he slinks away I smile more. Then all my team mates laugh, and them laughing makes me happy and I smile even more._

Akutagawa Jiroh sat up and stretched, looking around. This wasn't his bedroom…

"Jiroh!" a high voice yelled from somewhere below him. "Why are you up a tree? Come home, it's almost lunch!"

Oh yeah, he was up a tree in the park, hiding from his sister and clearly not doing a very good job of it as she had now found him.

_I have to smile a lot at home, nobody else does very much. Nana-san smiles at me, but she's always busy or out running errands. Ruriko doesn't like smiling; she says she wants to look 'elegant' for Buchou. I told her she had to smile because otherwise she'd get wrinkles and Buchou – grey hair or not – doesn't seem the type to go for wrinkles. She hit me._

He could have sworn he had two pens when he left the house…Buchou wouldn't have taken one that morning, he had his own pens, hmm…where was Momo-kun? He must have forgotten to give him his pen back, that was a shame. Oh well, he had lots of pens at home just like it.

"Jiroooooh! Get out of that tree and come home! Nanami-san was already making lunch when I came to find you!" Jiroh sighed and, holding his book to his chest, half jumped and half fell out of the tree. The red-headed little girl grabbed his hand and pulled him home.

_Mom doesn't smile anymore either; I can't remember when she last smiled. I think it was before Ruriko was born, back when Dad and Tokutaro were around. Yeah, before she hired Nana-san to live with us and do all the chores and things._

_Dad never smiled much either, or Tokutaro. That's weird._

"Lunch. Jiroh." Ruriko pushed her big brother into a chair and ran off to wash up and change into a pretty dress for lunch. Jiroh never understood this; why wear nice clothes for eating if you were only going to spill stuff down yourself? Then again he never wore particularly fancy clothing; he could fall asleep in a muddy puddle or something and that would be a waste. A young woman in a plain dress and apron laid food out on the table and beamed at Jiroh.

"Hello Jiroh, are you well?"  
"Oh yeah, Nana-san, I'm great" he grinned back at her and took a sandwich from one of the plates on the table. "I've been thinking, I have to write about smiling for my project, right? Do you know why Mom doesn't smile much anymore? She looks pretty when she smiles"

Nana looked at the boy sadly and ruffled his hair. Her mistress' son was so naïve and sweet, unlike Ruriko who was, as cute as she could be, very annoying. Jiroh was like her own child, and she wanted to keep him as a child for as long as she could. "I don't know, Jiroh, I really don't know. If you're stuck on your project, why don't you read one of your manga things? You've got so many, there has to be something that can help you, right?"

Jiroh nodded, mouth too full of sandwich to say anything.

_Since I was very little, Dad always said I was lazy. He told Mom I slept too much and should be active like all the other kids, but I couldn't help it. Tokutaro was three years older than me and he was perfect, he was top of his class and in all the sports teams. I always wanted him to teach me how to do sports, but I was too tired. Mom and Dad fought a lot about me._

_When I was eight, I remember spending a lot of time in a big room with lots of people in. Nana told me once this was a courtroom and we were sitting through custody stuff, but I slept through most of that. Me being diagnosed with narcolepsy was the last straw and Dad said he didn't care about taking any of the money; he wanted a clean break without taking a penny with him. Apparently Tokutaro stood up in the middle of the room and said he wanted to be with dad, and it was ruled that Mom would have me and Ruriko, who wasn't born, as well as all the stuff, and Dad would take Tokutaro and just go. This is what Nana says happened, anyway, Mom told her because she wasn't there and I was asleep. After that Mom decided that I needed to make friends and I couldn't be taught at home anymore so she sent me to Hyoutei._

_I don't remember Tokutaro much, I remember someone patting my head while I was asleep, and I woke up and Mom said him and Dad had gone. I don't really miss him; I spent most of my time with him asleep. Ruriko doesn't even know Tokutaro ever existed, it's easier that way._

_What does this have to do with smiling?_

_Oh yeah, since then Mom doesn't smile much, a while after Dad and Tokutaro left and Ruriko was born, she hired Nana-san. Nana-san lives with us and does all the chores and things, and she used to play with Ruriko and take us shopping. Poor Nana-san, she does everything while Mom sits in her room and mopes. I hope she stays with us forever._

Well, she most likely would, since the Akutagawas actually had around the same amount of money – if not more – as the Atobes. Jiroh just didn't flaunt it as much.

Jiroh had his own floor of the house, first one above the ground floor so he only had one flight of stairs to fall asleep on. His bedroom, bathroom, random room for storing objects, and his manga room. He loved his manga room; Hundreds and hundreds of little books, arranged by series, alphabetic order, genre, he would even dare to say he had more manga than Atobe had underwear. He settled on a beanbag with a little stack of one of his all time favourites: _Imadoki_.

He loved that series so much; he could just connect with it so well. Especially the female lead, who with all the troubles she had in her life, stayed happy, pursued love, and remembered to always smile. She was Jiroh's imaginary friend when he was little, as he couldn't be bothered to make up his own, and if she was real Jiroh would want to marry her.

Jiroh's trail of thought wandered, what would happen if Tanpopo _was_ real and she met Atobe? Well, first Atobe would tell her she couldn't dress herself, then tell her to wash her hands if she'd been playing around with flowers in case she got any of his nice things all muddy. After that he'd most likely point out that her hair didn't suit her, her school was totally inferior to Hyoutei, and she had a rubbish taste in boyfriends.

"Jiroh?" Gah, Ruriko, just when things were getting fun. "You fell asleep, and Nanami-san says that _Atobe-sama _is coming over! He called you but your phone was downstairs, see. Now _I'm_ going to brush my hair and find a pretty dress to wear!" she did a little twirl and a curtsey as Jiroh, bleary eyed, yawned.

"You're already wearing a pretty dress, Ruriko"

"I want to put on a _prettier_ one, silly. Atobe-sama is going to be my husband someday, because he's a handsome prince and I'm a pretty princess!" She skipped away, as her big brother idly flung a pen at her.

"You do that, but when I grow up I wanna marry Buchou too…"

Now, back to Tanpopo and Atobe having that fabulous catfight.

_Buchou makes me smile lots and lots because he is awesome._ Jiroh woke up to find Atobe sitting on a beanbag beside him, writing in _his_ project. _Even when I fall asleep at practice in the middle of the courts Buchou doesn't get mad at me because I'm special like that._

"Stop writing in my book, Buchou!" the blond squealed and tried to retrieve the book at no avail. Atobe kept writing.

_It's also probably because Buchou was a complete arse to me when I first joined Hyoutei because I was narcoleptic and he thought I was lazy and after the captain gave him a good talking to at the end of first year he's been trying to make up for being so obnoxious ever since, but since anyone who is mean to me is going straight to hell because I'm so cute there's probably no point so why does he keep being nice to me?_

"I said stop! Give it baaaaaack!" Atobe stood up, silently, and continued writing in Jiroh's project. He wasn't even bothering to use Jiroh's blue gel pen, making it incredibly obvious that it wasn't Jiroh writing at all.

_Well, probably because I'm so cute Buchou decided he wanted to protect me, and after Buchou was really horrible and read my project while I was sleeping he found out a load of stuff that makes him really impressed that I can keep smiling all the time. Most likely of all, it's because I have the most beautiful smile in the whole world and Buchou is in love with me._

Atobe put the book down, knelt before Jiroh – who was still on his beanbag – and pulled him into a kiss; a long, lingering kiss that Jiroh quite a while to register. Atobe smiled, stroked his cheek softly, and left.

Jiroh spaced out for a while, and picked up his book.

_Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!_


End file.
